A Statement About the Third Book in My Marathon

I don't know about you, but I forgot how fast the Harry Potter books are to read. Of course, the first three are the shortest, but that is neither here nor there.

Ah, The Prisoner of Azkaban. Let's all agree right now that this book is where the saga begins. The Sorcerer's Stone is the beginning; The Chamber of Secrets is a time-burner and back-story filler; The Prisoner of Azkaban begins the rise of Voldemort.

A lot of retrospective pieces of interest, not the least of which is Professor Trelawney's second real prediction. In an under-mentioned creepy, creepy moment in the series, the fortune-telling ding-bat has a genuine moment of sight in the middle of Harry's Divination final exam. She predicts the rise of the Dark Lord following the return of his most loyal that very night. When Harry relates this incident to Dumbledore at the end of the story, Dumbledore lets drop that this is the second time Professor Trelawney made a legitimate prediction.

It's not until later that we learn her other prediction was the reason Voldemort came to Godric's Hollow to murder Harry Potter in the first place.

Meeting key players in the coming events is at once exhilarating and sad, knowing what is to come for them. When Remus Lupin stood up to ward off the Dementor on the Hogwart's Express, all I could do was hear small voices saying "Teddy Lupin is kissing our cousin!!" When Cedric Diggory comes over to admire Harry's Firebolt, all I could think of was "the wrong place at the wrong time". And when Cornelius Fudge met Harry outside of the Leaky Cauldron, all I could think was "you raging Douchecanoe."

We also see the beginning of Harry In Isolation, as he starts to get cut-off from people based purely on his own experiences. No one can know what he experiences when he's near the Dementors. No one knows the relief he feels to learn that there is a whole network of people out there, friends of his parents, who care deeply about his well-being. While occasionally whiney, Harry is also a very singular boy to whom not a lot of living people can relate. The Prisoner of Azkaban is the first time we start to see this build thematically.

So what happens in the end? Of course the servant escapes to rejoin his master, though the servant turns out not to be the man we suspected all along. And where does The Goblet of Fire begin? With the servant and his master in the Riddle mansion in central England, talking about the murder of poor Bertha Jenkins.

And with that... on to the Quidditch World Cup! (Appropriate, no? From one Cup to the other...)